When Children Reach Young Adulthood

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Rev.
Fr. Charles Joanides, Ph.D., LMFT

Over the past six months I have written about
the challenges that intermarried couples and their families face
over the life cycle. This article will continue this work by describing
some of the typical challenges that these families encounter when
their children become young adults. The information included in
this article emerged from twenty focus groups that were conducted
across the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese (GOA) from 1998 –
2000. My hope is that intermarried couples with children will
find this information helpful.

Separating
from the Family

Children
in our culture who reach young adulthood are typically busy separating
themselves from their parents in an effort to form their own opinions
about the world around them.themselves Parents are also generally
assisting and supporting them in this effort.

When young
adults begin separating themselves from their childhood homes,
they not only separate from their family of origin, but must also
separate from the cultural, religious, and community structures
of their youth. However, this does not imply that young adults
thoroughly discard their cultural and religious roots since in
most cases this does not happen. Young adults are simply creating
enough space between themselves and their parents to afford themselves
ample room to make independent choices and decisions about important
matters such as culture and religion. Moreover, if parents are
too intrusive and seek to impose their values on their young adult
children, they may create tension or worse, a family cut-off.

One focus
group participant expressed the separation process in this way:
“I went into the military at 19. A year later when I returned
on leave, my parents began asking me all kinds of questions and
treating me like a kid. Some of their questions had to do with
religion like, ‘Have you been going to church?’ Well,
I didn’t say much, and there was a lot of tension in the
house between us. I felt as if I was old enough to make my own
decisions about a lot of things, and it wasn’t their business
anymore. Take religion for example, I felt like I needed to explore
the idea of religion by myself.”

Four
Possible Pathways

Unlike adolescents
who busy themselves experimenting and testing out new ideas, most
young adults are beginning to form the basis of a solid and stable
life structure and cultural identity which will ultimately assist
them in their efforts to make crucial decisions about such things
like their career and future mate. Some of these decisions will
be related to religion and culture. For example, Dr. Joel Crown,
in his book, Mixed Matches, describes four possible pathways that
young adults'’ might take when decisions about culture and
religion are being considered.

Some
young adults will essentially identify themselves with "the
parent who is from the dominant culture, and they will essentially
adopt this parent’s cultural and religious values. These
young adults may or may not identify with the other parent who
is from a minority culture.

Some young adults will identify themselves "with the minority
ethnic, racial, or religious background of one of their parents.
In these instances, the young adult may or may not acknowledge
the other parent'’s background.

Some young adults will tend to create their own values, rituals
and identity - irrespective of both parent's’ cultural
and religious backgrounds. These young adults may refuse to
accept any labels or create a distinct label that differentiates
them from any childhood cultural and religious labels.

Other
young adults may strive to bring together and integrate both
their parents'’ cultural and religious backgrounds. These
adults will generally acknowledge that both their parents have
influenced their perceptions of culture and religion.

What is important to note here is that young adults may make some
initial decisions regarding religion and culture at this stage
in the life cycle, but these decisions may be reconfigured several
times as they mature. The following remarks are typical, “When
I left home for college, I all but rejected my Greek Orthodox
faith. But as time passed and I had a family, I found myself slowly
gravitating back to my Greek Orthodox background. I guess when
it came down to it, of all the places I would like to be on Sunday
morning, I decided St. George Greek Orthodox Church was probably
the best place for me.”

Marital
and Family Challenges

As young
adult children make decisions about religion and culture, it can
be a particularly unsettling time for all members of their family.
If parents have not come to terms with their religious differences,
old wounds will generally surface and irritate their marriage
— especially if their adult children make decisions about
religion that appear to be related to parents'’ unresolved
religious differences. In this case, spouses might be prone to
assign blame and reopen old arguments. The following short exchange
between a husband and wife from one of the focus groups illustrates
this point.

Linda:
“I wouldn’t argue about that. We’ve had a hard
time agreeing about where to go to church, where the children
would be baptized and which church activities they should attend.”

George:
“I always wanted them to attend the Greek Church and she
wanted them to be raised Catholic.”

Linda:
“For years we had some real heated arguments – sometimes
in front of the children.”

George:
“Then somewhere around the time when they were teens, to
keep the peace we just stopped going to church.”

Linda:
“Yeah, and now that they’re on their own, one of them
won’t have anything to do with organized religion, and the
other two are attending non-denominational churches. (Thoughtfully)
These days George blames me, and I blame him.”

Family
Tension and Cut-Offs

Parents with
strong opinions about religion can also potentially drive a wedge
between themselves and their children. Young adult children might
pretend to espouse certain religious affiliations to please their
parents. They might also resent covert and overt intrusions into
this part of their lives that could negatively color their relationship.
In some instances, cut-offs might take place when irreconcilable
differences over religion and culture exist between a parent(s)
and a young adult child.

One participant
who had little to do with her parents stated, “I came to
this country as an exchange student and later became an American
citizen. During the time when I was studying, I met my husband.
We started dating, and we fell deeply in love. When I told my
parents, I knew they wouldn’t be pleased, but I didn’t
expect them to react so negatively. They tried everything to break
us up. But nothing worked because we loved each other.We
eventually set a date to get married in the Greek Orthodox Church,
but they refused to attend the wedding. This hurt terribly, but
I decided to go ahead with the wedding. We’ve been happily
married for ten years now. They still refuse to meet my husband,
and I have slowly begun accepting the fact they may never be a
big part of our lives.”

Some
Concluding Thoughts

Results from
the Interfaith Research Project clearly suggest that most intermarried
couples and families live a very stable and happy existences.
However, together with the challenges that single faith marriages
and families face when children reach adulthood, results also
indicate that intermarried couples and families confront some
unique challenges related to their religious and cultural differences.
This article has described some of these challenges. Intermarried
couples who are aware of these challenges will be in a better
position to cultivate marital satisfaction and family stability.